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Mount Parnassus 


















Fragments from Parnassus 


Being Parts or the Whole of Great 
and Good Poems : Edited by 
Charles L. Dana 


THIRD AND ENLARGED EDITION 



The Elm Tree Press 

Woodstock Vermont 
1922 







^STOr CoiVG^v 




APR 2 11982 


COPY 


DNV-' 



PREFACE 


It is a great mistake to think that one must read all 
of a given poem. The delight of beauty is often found 
only in a single passage or verse, while the whole 
poem may be a feeble thing. 

We believe it is a good thing to have a collection of 
portions of verse, portions which touch the heart, or 
which ought to do so. 

We present, therefore, some “Fragments from Par¬ 
nassus ”, torn from lower summits as well as from 
the higher. We hope that this venture may interest 
some in the Great Art. 




f 




CONTENTS 


The Passionate Poet 
The Linnet’s Song 
The Recessional 
For the Game’s Sake 
Ad Coelum 
The Nautilus 
The Celestial Surgeon 
On Love 

A Librarian's Preference 

The Supreme Hymn 

The Old Oak 

The Set of the Sail 

The Wisdom of a Student in J 

The American 

Horace to the Slackers 

The First Great War Oration 

Back to the Farm 

The Adventure of a Rose 

O Captain! My Captain! 

The Water Lily 
Some Questions Answered 
The Flower of Liberty 
Epitaph to His Daughter 
Ode on Immortality 


Robert Bridges 

1 

J. E. Flecker 

2 

Rudyard Kipling 

2 

Henry Newbolt 

3 

Harry Romaine 

3 

Oliver Wendell Holmes 

3 

R. L. Stevenson 

4 

Francis Thompson 

4 

Sam Walter Foss 

5 

5 

Hall Caine 

6 

Ella Wheeler Wilcox 

6 

Donald Hankey 

7 

Rudyard Kipling 

7 

De Vere 

8 

Pericles 

9 

Walt Whitman 

10 

F. C. Knowles 

10 

Walt Whitman 

11 

Mary Frances Butts 

12 

D. A. 

12 

Oliver Wendell Holmes 

13 

Mark Twain 

13 

William Wordsworth 

14 


VI 


FRAGMENTS FROM PARNASSUS 


To the Future Sweetheart 

Richard Crashaw 

15 

Keats’ Last Sonnet 

John Keats 

16 

Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries 

London Times 

17 

Captain of My Soul 

W. E. Henley 

17 

A Pagan Invocation 

Lucretius 

18 

A Greek Song to the Nightingale 

Aristophanes 

19 

"The Tenderest Lines” 

Spenser 

19 

The Rose 

Edmund Waller 

20 

Melodious Rhyme 

John Milton 

20 

In Flanders’ Fields 

Col John McCrae 

21 

An Ancient Hymn to Peace 

Henry Vaughan 

22 

Poems to Those Who Died at Sea 

Milton; Propertius 

23 

Mediaeval Students’ Songs 


24 

Infinitus et Immensus 

Adam de St. Victor 

25 

A Description of God 

Bishop Hildebert 

25 

A Greek Epigram 

Philodemus 

26 

Art 

Theophile Gautier 

26 

A Lovely Snake 

John Milton 

27 

The Face of Helen 

Christopher Marlowe 

27 

Bedouin Love Song 

Bayard Taylor 

28 

Immortality 

R. H. Dana, Sr. 

29 

A Great Lyrist 

Shelley 

30 

To the Ladies of the Court 

Jonson 

32 

Hadrian’s Address to His Soul 


33 

Two Chinese Poems 

Li-Po 

33 

The Four Greatest Sonnets 


35 

Literary People 

Dr. Guy Patin 

40 



FRAGMENTS FROM PARNASSUS vii 


"O! for a Booke” 40 

A Phantasy 40 

The Immortal Lines in Festus Philip James Bailey 41 

A Motto and a Prayer 41 

Coincident Aspirations of Philemon and Walt Whitman 42 

One of the Twelve Perfect Poems Swinburne 43 

The Wordsworthian Theory of Poetry Alice Wilson 44 

Kubla Khan Samuel Taylor Coleridge 44 

A Poet’s Self-Analysis Thomas Gray 45 

The Salutation of the Dawn From the Sanscrit 46 

The Roundel Swinburne 46 

An Old French Song 47 

Another Phantasy F. W. H. Myers 48 

The Greek Anthology 48 

The Greek Sculptors 49 

A Misogynist’s Song Sir Walter Scott 50 

There Is a Tavern in the Town 50 

To Faunus Horace 51 

The Land of Heart's Desire W. B. Yeats 53 

William Blake's Reaction to the Dawn William Blake 54 

Two Valedictories Haryngton, 1608 55 

































Fragments from Parnassus 

" Those whom Helicon’s sweet waters please from mocking crowds 
receive contempt alone. ”— Petrarch 


The Passionate Poet 

Robert Bridges, Poet Laureate of England, is usually 
thought of as “classical”, faultless and rather cold. He 
sings also of the wisdom of joy and speaks of death as the 
time when 

“Pleasure, aging to her full increase, 

Puts on perfection, and is throned in peace.” 

But he sometimes becomes a passionate poet: 

My delight and thy delight 
Walking, like two angels white. 

In the gardens of the night: 

My desire and thy desire 
Twining to a tongue of fire, 

Leaping live and laughing higher; 

Thro’ the everlasting strife 
In the mystery of life. 

Love, from whom the world begun, 

Hath the secret of the sun. 

Love can tell, and love alone, 

Whence the million stars were strewn, 

Why each atom knows its own, 

How, in spite of woe and death, 

Gay is life, and sweet is breath: 

This he taught us, this he knew, 

Happy in his science true. 


2 


FRAGMENTS FROM PARNASSUS 


The Linnet’s Song 

Of this often quoted poem by J. E. Flecker a critic writes: 
“In its purity of outlines, its grace, the suggestion of its 
restraint, it seems inevitable; one feels that it must have 
sprung as spontaneously from the mind of its creator as a 
blade of grass grows from the soil.” 

A linnet who had lost her way 
Sang on a blackened bough in Hell, 

Till all the ghosts remembered well 
The trees, the wind, the golden day. 

At last they knew that they had died, 

When they heard music in that land, 

And some one there stole forth a hand 
To draw a brother to his side. 

The Recessional 

Kipling’s greatest poem needs to be read often—or parts 
of it. 

God of our fathers, known of old— 

Lord of our far-flung battle line— 

Beneath whose awful hand we hold 
Dominion over palm and pine— 

Lord God of hosts be with us yet, 

Lest we forget—lest we forget! 

The tumult and the shouting dies— 

The captains and the kings depart, 

Still stands thine ancient Sacrifice, 

An humble and a contrite heart. 

Lord God of hosts, be with us yet, 

Lest we forget, lest we forget! 

For heathen heart that puts her trust 
In reeking tube and iron shard— 

All valient dust that builds on dust, 

And guarding calls not Thee to guard— 

For frantic boast and foolish word, 

Thy Mercy on Thy People, Lord! 



FRAGMENTS FROM PARNASSUS 


3 


For the Game’s Sake 

Henry Newbolt is a contemporary poet who loves to write 
of conflicts and conquest. 

To set the Cause above Renown, 

To love the game beyond the prize, 

To honor while you strike him down 
The foe that comes with fearless eyes; 

To count the life of battle good, 

And dear the land that gave you birth, 

And dearer yet the brotherhood 

That binds the brave of all the earth. 

Ad Coelum 

At the muezzin’s call for prayer, 

The kneeling faithful thronged the square, 

And on Pushkara’s lofty height 

The dark priest chanted Brahma’s might. 

Amid a monastery’s weeds 
An old Franciscan told his beads; 

While to the synagogue there came 
A Jew, to praise Jehovah’s name. 

The one great God looked down and smiled 
And counted each his loving child; 

For Turk and Brahmin, monk and Jew 
Had reached him through the gods they knew. 

Harry Romaine 

The Nautilus 

Oliver Wendell Holmes was not a major poet, but some¬ 
times minor poets strike chords which bring forth the 
resonance of genius. Holmes sang his loftiest in The 
Nautilus: 

Build thee more stately mansions, oh, my soul 
As the swift seasons roll! 

Leave thy low-vaulted past! 

Let each new temple nobler than the last, 

Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, 

Till thou at length art free, 

Leaving thine outgrown self by life’s unresting sea. 



4 


FRAGMENTS FROM PARNASSUS 


The Celestial Surgeon 

I think it is George Moore who has said that Stevenson 
did not know how to write stories and that his philosophy 
of life was a tuberculous optimism, harmful to human 
progress. 

We give below The Celestial Surgeon of Stevenson. It 
is a good thing for the tired, cross business man and 
woman. They can read it and see if they do not think Mr. 
Moore’s view is not just as “punk” as are most of his con¬ 
tributions to human opinion. 

If I have faltered more or less 
In my great task of happiness; 

If I have moved among my race 
And shown no glorious morning face; 

If beams from happy human eyes 
Have moved me not; if morning skies, 

Books, and my food, and summer rain 
Knocked on my sullen heart in vain: 

Lord, thy most pointed pleasure take 
And stab my spirit broad awake; 

Or, Lord, if too obdurate I, 

Choose thou, before that spirit die, 

A piecing pain, a killing sin, 

And to my dead heart run them in! 

Francis Thompson on Love 

Francis Thompson was perhaps the most unhappy and 
unhealthy genius England ever produced. He was for a 
long time a penniless beggar wandering through the 
streets of London, and spending for opium what he could 
beg or earn. He ranks, however, among the greater 
Victorian poets and his first editions, signed, are valued at 
one hunded dollars. Here is one of his sentiments: 

“Ah, the ill we do in tenderness, and the hateful horror of 
love! 

It has sent more souls to the unslaked Pit then it will ever 
draw above.” 



FRAGMENTS FROM PARNASSUS 


5 


A Librarian’s Preference 

The librarian of a small town in Massachusetts once wrote 
a poem which belongs in the Anthology. He believed in 
accessible libraries and making them useful. His name was 
Sam Walter Foss, and everyone has read the verses of 
which the following is a reminder: 

There are hermit souls that live withdrawn in the peace 
of their self content, 

There are souls like stars that dwell apart in a fellowless 
firmament, 

There are pioneer souls that blaze their paths where 
highways never ran, 

Let me live in a house by the side of the road and be a 
friend to man. 


The Supreme Hymn 

Collyer tells this anecdote: I well remember one day when 
the subject of “the supreme hymn” was the object of a 
discussion between Ralph Waldo Emerson and Dr. Oliver 
Wendell Holmes. The latter said that many of the so-called 
hymns were mere pieces of cabinet-work. Then his voice 
deepened, his eyes shone, as we remember him in his noblest 
moments, as he said: “One hymn I think supreme.” Emer¬ 
son threw his head back, as he always did when his 
attention was arrested, and waited. Dr. Holmes repeated 
the first verse: 

Thou hidden Love of God, whose height, 

Whose depth, unfathomed, no man knows, 

I see from far thy beauteous light; 

Inly I sigh for Thy repose. 

My heart is pained, nor can it be 
At rest till it find rest in Thee. 

“I know—I know,” exclaimed Emerson. “That is the 
supreme hymn.” 



6 


FRAGMENTS FROM PARNASSUS 


The Old Oak 

In Memoriam W. E. Gladstone 

His feet laid hold of the marl and earth, his head was in 
the sky, 

He had seen a thousand bud and burst, he had seen a 
thousand die; 

And none knew when he began to be, of trees,that grew on 
that ground— 

Lord of the wood, king of the oaks, monarchs of all around. 

And, towering high over others, the wind in his branches 
roared, 

Yet never a limb did the tempest break, or shatter a bough 
that soared; 

Only the ripe young acorns it flung to the earth at his 
kneees, 

And they sprung up themselves in their season, a belt of 
protecting trees. 

But at length, when the storms were over, and still was the 
forest dell, 

Unbattered, unbeaten, unbroken, he bowed himself and fell; 

And the breadth of that mighty clearing when the giant 
had gone from his place 

Was like to the scene of a hundred oaks in the waste of its 
empty space. 

Hall Caine 

The Set of the Sail 

One ship drives east and another drives west, 

With the selfsame winds that blow, 

Tis the set of the sails 
And not the gales 
Which tells us the way to go. 

Like the winds of the sea are the winds of fate, 

As we voyage along through life. 

’Tis the set of the soul 
That decides the goal 
And not the calm or the strife. 

Ella Wheeler Wilcox 



FRAGMENTS FROM PARNASSUS 


7 


The Wisdom of a Student in Arms 

Donald Hankey was a Student in Arms who died at the 
front. His notes and little plays and letters were published 
after his death. One of his chapters, called “The Wisdom 
of the Student in Arms”, contained the following: 

“Religion is the widening of a man’s horizon so as 
to include God. It is in the nature of a speculation, 
but its returns are immediate.” 

“True religion means betting one’s life that there 
is a God. Its immediate fruits are courage, stability, 
calm, unselfishness, friendship, humility, and hope.” 

“Faith is an effective force whose measure has nev- 
eryet been taken.” 

“Belief in God may be illusion, but it is an illusion 
that pays.” 

This is much like the doctrine Honore Balzac once preach¬ 
ed in “The Country Doctor.” 


The American 

Calm-eyed he scoffs at sword and crown, 

Or panic-blinded stabs and slays; 

Blatant he bids the world bow down, 

Or cringing begs a crumb of praise— 
Enslaved, illogical, elate, 

He greets th’ embarrassed gods, nor fears 
To shake the iron hand of Fate, 

Or match with Destiny for beers. 

Lo! imperturbable he rules, 

Unkempt, disreputable, vast, 

And, in the teeth of all the schools, 

I — I shall save him at the last! 


Kipling 



8 


FRAGMENTS FROM PARNASSUS 


Horace to the Slackers 

There is one pagan poet, Quintus Horatius Flaccus, who 
made it his business to stimulate the slackers of his native 
land. 

Rome, teach thine offspring to sustain 
Stern poverty; to wield the spear, 

To spur the war-horse o’er the plain 
And smite the Parthian foe with fear. 

Blessed who for his country dies 
Blessed and honored! 

In his Secular Hymn he makes a fervent prayer that 
should appeal to any aspiring race: 

Ye gods! if Rome be yours, to placid Age 
Give timely rest; to docile Youth 
Grant the rich heritage 
Of morals, modesty, and truth: 

On Rome herself bestow a teeming race, 

Wealth, Empire, Faith, and all befitting grace. 
Vouchscafe to Venus’ and Anchises’ heir, 

Who offers at your shrines 
Due sacrifice to milk-white kine, 

Justly to rule, to pity, and to dare, 

To crush insulting hosts, the prostrate foeman spare! 
The haughty Mede has learnt to fear 
The Alban axe, the Latian spear, 

And Scythians, suppliant now, await 
The conqueror’s doom, their coming fate. 

Honour and Peace, and pristine Shame, 

And Virtue’s oft dishonoured name, 

Have dared, long exiled, to return, 

And with them, Plenty lifts her golden horn. 

Augur Apollo ! Bearer of the bow! 

Warrior and Prophet! Loved one of the nine! 

Healer in sickness! Comforter in woe! 

If still the templed crags of Palatine 
And Latium’s fruitful plains to thee are dear, 



FRAGMENTS FROM PARNASSUS 


9 


Perpetuate for cycles yet to come, 

Mightier in each advancing year, 

The ever-growing might and majesty of Rome. 
Thou, too, Diana, from thy Aventine 

And Algidus’ deep woods look down and hear 
The voice of those who guard the Books Divine, 
And to thy Youthful Choir incline a loving ear. 

Return we home! We know that Jove 
And all the gods our song approve 
To Pheobus and Diana given: 

The virgin hymn is heard in heaven. 

De Vere 


The First Great War Oration 

In the year B. C. 431 the funeral of those who first fell 
in the Peloponnesian war was celebrated in accordance with 
an old national custom. Thucydides says, describing the 
ceremony: “The bones of the dead are placed in chests 
made of cypress wood and arranged under a tent at the 
public sepulchre situated in the most beautiful spot outside 
the city walls. When the remains have been lain in the 
earth some man of known ability and high reputation de¬ 
livers a suitable oration over them; after which the people 
depart.” 

Over those who were first buried Pericles was chosen to 
speak and paid them this tribute : 

“The sacrifice which they collectively made was individ¬ 
ually repaid to them; for they received again each one for 
himself a praise which grows not old, and the noblest of all 
sepulchres — I speak not of that in which their remains 
are laid, but of that in which their glory survives, and is 
proclaimed always and on every fitting occasion both in 
word and deed. For the whole earth is the sepulchre of 
famous men; not only are they commemorated by columns 
and inscriptions in their own country, but in foreign lands 



10 


FRAGMENTS FROM PARNASSUS 


there dwells also an unwritten memorial of them, graven 
not on stone but in the hearts of men. Make them your 
examples, and, esteeming courage to be freedom and free¬ 
dom to be happiness, do not weigh too nicely the perils of 
war.” 

Back to the Farm 

I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so 
placid and self-contained, 

I stand and look at them long and long. 

They do not sweat and whine about their condition, 

They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins, 
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God, 
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania 
of owning things, 

Not one kneels to another, nor his kind that lived thous¬ 
ands of years ago, 

Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth. 

So they show their relations to me and I accept them, 
They bring me tokens of myself, they evince them plainly 
in their possession. 

Walt Whitman 

The Adventure of a Rose 

Sometimes one finds poetry in a College Song Book. Mr. F. 
C. Knowles wrote a poem which appears in the Wesleyan 
Song Book. It is a daintily written fancy worthy of imag¬ 
inative and susceptible youth : 

O Rose, climb up to her window, 

And in through the casement reach, 

And say what I may not utter, 

In your beautiful silent speech! 

She will shake the dew from your petals, 

She will press you close to her lips, 

She will hold you never so lightly, 

In her warm ,white finger tips. 

And then—who can tell?—she may whisper 
(While the city sleeps below) 

I was dreaming of him when you woke me, 

But, Rose, he must never know. 



FRAGMENTS FROM PARNASSUS 


11 


O Captain! My Captain! 

Walt Whitman rarely wrote in rhyming verse. When he 
did, as in the following, he wrote the most affecting poem 
ever written on the death of a great man. Perhaps only 
those who lived in those days and felt the national reac¬ 
tion to the assassination of Lincoln can appreciate fully the 
pathos and the note of personal affection and sorrow in 
Whitman’s poem. 

0 Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done; 

The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is 
won; 

The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting, 
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and 
daring. 

But 0 heart! heart! heart! 

0 the bleeding drops of red, 

Where on the deck my Captain lies, 

Fallen cold and dead. 

0 Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells: 

Rise up!—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills, 
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores 
a-crowding; 

For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces 
turning. 

Here Captain! dear father! 

■This arm beneath your head! 

It is some dream that on the deck, 

You’ve fallen cold and dead. 

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still; 

My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will; 
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and 
done, 

From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won: 
Exult 0 shores, and ring 0 bells! 

But I with mournful tread, 

Walk the deck my Captain lies, 

Fallen cold and dead. 



12 


FRAGMENTS FROM PARNASSUS 


The Water Lily 

0, star on the hr east of the river, 

O, marvel of bloom and grace! 

Did you fall straight down from Heaven 
Out of the sweetest place! 

You are white as the thoughts of an angel, 
Your heart is steeped in the sun— 

Did you grow in the golden city, 

My pure and radiant one? 

Nay, nay, I fell not out of Heaven, 

None gave me my saintly white, 

It slowly grew from the blackness, 

Far down in the dreary night. 

From the ooze of the silent river, 

I won my glory and grace; 

White souls fall not, 0, my poet, 

They rise to the sweetest place. 

Mary Frances Butts 


Some Questions Answered 

Why are we here? Where do we go? 

What is the good? What do we know? 

Do we live to live? Or live to die? 

Why do we worry? Why ask why? 

These are your queries, and they show 
What a number of things you need to know. 
Now my modest Muse finds here no call 
To tell why the Great Power made us all. 

The thing is finished, and here we are; 

And the job we have: Shall we make or mar? 
The stars make light—twice two makes four: 
Shall we fret to know why they don’t make more? 
Not why things are, but what shall we do 
Is the test the Lord puts fine souls thro’. 



FRAGMENTS FROM PARNASSUS 


13 


Then take those pleasures that come each day, 

Yet strive to do what the High Gods say. 

If you do these things—so past lives teach— 

You will gather the joys which the good saints preach. 
And you’ll leave at last, we Seers all sing, 

On a certain trip to a Better Thing. 

And the good of it all? For better or worse, 

You have added yourself to the Universe, 

D. A. 


The Flower of Liberty 

A Boston doctor, Oliver Wendall Holmes, wrote some im¬ 
mortal lines on the American Flag: 

Thy sacred leaves, fair Freedom’s flower, 

Shall ever float on dome and tower, 

To all their heavenly colors true, 

On blackening frosts or crimson dew, 

And God love us as we love thee, 

Thrice Holy Flower of Liberty! 

Then hail to the banner of the free, 

The Starry Flower of Liberty. 


Mark Twain’s Epitaph to His Daughter 

Verse which Mark Twain had placed on his daughter’s 
tombstone: 

Warm Summer sun, 

Shine kindly here. 

Warm Southern wind, 

Blow softly here. 

Green sod above, 

Lie light, lie light. 

Good night, dear heart, 

Good night, good night. 



14 


FRAGMENTS FROM PARNASSUS 


Ode on Immortality 

The prevalence of Free Verse and of the new poetry has 
not lessened the vogue or the appeal of the great Victorians. 
Wordsworth’s position, for example, has been raised rather 
than lowered in the progress of the years. He shows that 
it is possible to appeal to a wider range of feeling than 
pure aesthetics. After all, emotion is the mental state 
associated with primal instincts. One of them is that of 
sacrifice and duty and one of them is that associated with 
the aspiration for life—even immortal life. One can be 
didactic and also poetic, if the didactic relates to and in¬ 
spires emotion connected with our primal instincts. This 
would be the modern psychological explanation and justifi¬ 
cation of the art of Wordsworth—who is also not always 
didactic. For he also appealed most eloquently to the love 
of country and home and to the sense of beauty aroused by 
landscape and seascape. 

In these days one can read Wordsworth’s Intimations of 
Immortality with special pertinence and enjoyment. It is 
more convincing, or at least satisfactory, than all the books 
on psychic research which have appeared in these late years. 

We print the best part. Having read this, get your Ox¬ 
ford Book of Verse and read it all. 


0 joy! that in our embers 
Is something that doth live, 

That nature yet remembers 
What was so fugitive! 

The thought of our past years in me doth breed 
Perpetual benediction; not, indeed, 

For that which is most worthy to be blest, 

Delight and liberty, the simple creed 
Of Childhood, whether busy or at rest, 

With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast: 
Not for these I raise 
The song of thanks and praise; 



FRAGMENTS FROM PARNASSUS 


15 


But for those obstinate questionings 
Of sense and outward things, 

Falling from us, vanishings; 

Blank misgivings of a Creature 
Moving about in worlds not realized, 

High instincts before which our mortal Nature 
Did tremble like a guilty Thing surprised 1 : 

But for those first affections, 

Those shadowy recollections, 

Which, be they what they may, 

Are yet the fountain light of all our day, 

Are yet the master light of all our seeing; 

Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make 
Our noisy years seem like moments in the being 
Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake, 

To perish never; 

Which neither listlessness nor mad endeavor, 

Nor Man nor Boy, 

Nor all that is at enmity with joy, 

Can utterly abolish or destroy! 

Hence in a season of calm weather 
Though in land far we be, 

Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea, 

Which brought us hither, 

Can in a moment travel thither, 

And see the children sport upon the shore, 

And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore. 

To the Future Sweetheart 

The young man who has not yet fallen in love, generally 
has the possibility in the back of his mind. To this young 
person the following lines make an appeal. 

Richard Crashaw, who wrote them, was not a great poet, 
but he sometimes sang well, and happily applauded the 
“Life that dares send 
A challenge to its end, 

And when it comes say, Welcome, friend!” 



16 


FRAGMENTS FROM PARNASSUS 


But the poem we quote he called Wishes to His Supposed 
Mistress: 


Whoe’er she be 

That not impossible She 

That shall command my heart and me: 

Where’er she lie, 

Locked up from mortal eye 
In shady leaves of destiny: 

Till that ripe birth 
Of studied Fate stand 1 forth, 

And teach her fair steps tread our earth: 

Till that divine 
Idea take a shrine 

Of crystal flesh, through which to shine. 

Meet you her, my Wishes, 

Bespeak her to my blisses, 

And be ye called, my absent kisses. 


Keats' Last Sonnet 

Bright Star! would I were steadfast as thou art— 
Not in lone splendor hung aloft the night, 

And watching with eternal lids apart, 

Like Nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite, 

The moving waters at their priest-like task 

Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores, 
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask 

Of snow upon the mountains and the moors— 

No—yet steadfast, still unchangeable, 

Pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast, 
To feel forever its soft fall and swell, 

Awake forever in a sweet unrest, 

Still, to hear her tender-taken breath, 

And so live ever—or else swoon to death. 



FRAGMENTS FROM PARNASSUS 


17 


Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries 

Printed in the London Times, October 31, 1917 

This poem awakened a great deal of interest hoth in Eng¬ 
land and in this country. It has been translated into Greek 
by W. D. Woodhead and again by J. M. Edmonds. It is one 
of the great epitaphs of the great war. 

These, in the day when heaven was falling, 

The hour when earth’s foundations fled, 

Followed their mercenary calling, 

And took their wages, and are dead. 

Their shoulders held the sky suspended; 

They stood, and earth’s foundations stay; 

What God abandoned, these defended, 

And saved the sum of things for pay. 

Captain of My Soul 

These verses by W. E. Henley are the utterances of a 
brave spirit in suffering. They furnish the strongest appeal 
I know to the believer in the creative force of the spirit as 
against the sagging notes of the modern mechanical inter¬ 
preters of nature to whom life is only a series of the 
adjustments and readjustments of fate. 

Out of the night that covers me, 

Black as the Pit from pole to pole, 

I thank whatever gods may be 
For my unconquerable soul. 

In the fell clutch of circumstance 
I have not winced nor cried aloud. 

Under the bludgeonings of chance 
My head is bloody, but unbowed. 

Beyond this place of wrath and tears 
Looms but the Horror of the shade, 

And yet the menace of the years 
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid. 



18 


FRAGMENTS FROM PARNASSUS 


It matters not how straight the gate, 

How charged with punishments the scroll, 

I am the master of my fate: 

I am the captain of my soul. 

A Pagan Invocation 

Lucretius was a Latin poet who sang about 

“The god's who haunt 
The lucid interspace of world and world, 

Where never creeps a cloud, or moves a wind, 

Nor ever falls the least white star of snow, 

Nor sound of human sorrow mounts to mar 
Their sacred, everlasting calm.” 

He denied that the gods were of any use even if they 
existed. 

Some one has written that Lucretius 

“Lifts 

His golden feet upon those empurpled stairs 
That climb into the windy halls of heaven.” 

He sang eloquently and fervently concerning the nature 
of the universe, and concerning the-greatness and truth of 
the doctrine of Epicurus. His theme also was the earth and 
the starry universe. Lucretius wrote some beautiful pass¬ 
ages of poetry and there are said to be no, finer lines in 
Latin epic literature than those of the introduction to his 
De Rerum Natura: 

Mother of the Aeneadae, darling of men and gods, in¬ 
crease-giving Venus, who beneath the gliding signs of 
heaven fillest with thy presence the ship-carrying sea, the 
corn-bearing lands, since through thee every kind of living 
thing is conceived, rises up and beholds the light of the 
sun. Before thee, goddess, flee the winds, the clouds of 
heaven; before thee and thy advent; for thee and thy ad¬ 
vent; for thee earth manifold in works puts forth sweet¬ 
smelling flowers; for thee the levels 1 of, the sea do laugh and 
heaven propitiated shines with outspread light. 

Translated by H. A. J. Munro 



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19 


A Greek Song to the Nightingale 

Aristophanes was a Greek poet and dramatist who put the 
most telling and violent satire, and grossest horse-play, 
into his work—yet who mingled this with some of the most 
beautiful lyrics ever composed. 

| We print here the Song of Hoopoe to the Nightingale. 
It is in the Comedy of The Birds. 

Cease, my mate, from slumber now; 

Let the sacred hymn-notes flow, 

Wailing with thy voice divine 
Long-wept Itys, mine and thine. 

So, when thy brown beak is thrilling 
With that holy music-trilling 
Through the woodbine’s leafy bound 
Swells the pure melodious sound 
To the throne of Zeus; and there 
Phoebus of the golden hair, 

Hearing, to thine elegies 
With the awaken’d chords replies 
On his ivory-clasped lyre, 

Stirring all the Olympian quire; 

Till from each immortal tongue 
Of that blessed heavenly throng 
Peals the full harmonious song. 

Kennedy’s Translation 

" The Tenderest Lines Ever Written in the 
English Tongue ” 

He there doth now enjoy eternal rest 

And happy ease which thou dost want and crave 

And further from it daily wanderest: 

What though some pain the little passage have 
That makes frail flesh to dread the bitter wave? 

Is not short pain well home that brings long ease 
And lays the soul to sleep in quiet grave? 

Sleep after toil, port after stormy seas, 

Ease after war, death after life, doth greatly please. 

Spenser 



20 


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The Rose 

Go, lovely rose! 

Tell her that wastes her time and me, 

That now she knows, 

When I resemble her to thee, 

How sweet and fair she seems to 'be. 

Edmund Waller 

Melodious Rhyme 

John Milton was a lover of music and a thorough musician. 
This fact often gave a certain special melodiousness to his 
poetry. These verses almost sing themselves: 

Ring out, ye crystal spheres! 

Once ibless our human ears, 

If ye have power to touch our senses so; 

And let your silver chime 
Move in melodious time; 

And let the bass of heaven’s deep organ blow, 

And with your nine-fold harmony 

Make up full consort to the angelic symphony. 

For if such holy song 
Enwrap our fancy long, 

Time will run back and fetch the age of gold; 

And speckled Vanity 
Will sicken soon and die, 

And Leprous Sin will melt from earthly mold 1 ; 

And Hell itself will pass away, 

And leave her dolorous mansions to the peering day. 

Yea, Truth and Justice then 
Will down return to men, 

Orbed in a rainbow; and, like glorious wearing, 
Mercy will sit between 
Throned in celestial sheen, 

With radiant feet the tissued clouds down steering; 
And heaven, as at some festival, 

Will open wide the gates of her high palace-hall. 



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21 


But wisest Fate says No; 

This must not yet be so; 

The Babe yet lies ini smiling infancy 
That on the bitter cross 
Must redeem our loss; 

So both himself and us to glorify; 

Yet first, to those ychained in sleep, 

The wakeful trump of doom must thunder through the deep. 

In Flanders’ Fields 

We have not published many war poems in the “Frag¬ 
ments,” but Col. John McCrae’s “In Flanders’ Field” had 
a wide popular appeal,—and remains one of the finest 
poems of the war. It had a response which was published 
in 1917. 

In Flanders’ fields the poppies grow 
Between the crosses, row on row, 

That mark our place, and in the sky 
The larks, still bravely singing, fly 
Scarce heard amidst the guns below. 

We are dead. Short days ago 
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, 

Loved and were loved, and now we lie 
In Flanders’ fields. 

Take up your quarrel with the foe. 

To you from falling hands we throw 
The Torch—be yours to hold it high; 

If ye break faith with us who die, 

We shall not sleep though poppies grow 
In Flanders’ fields. 

To this R. W. Lillard wrote an answer in verses ending: 
Fear not that ye have died for naught, 

The Torch ye threw to us is caught, 

Ten million hands will hold it high, 

And Freedom’s light shall never die. 

We’ve learned the lessons that ye taught 
In Flanders’ fields. 



22 


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An Ancient Hymn to Peace 

Henry Vaughan (1621-1692) was an excellent exponent of 
intensive verse. He wrote his very best into a few stanzas 
and then he would drop to lower levels. Altogether his 
poems make hut a small volume. No one wrote more beau¬ 
tiful descriptive or sacred verse than he did in his high 
moods. It is a pity that so much trivial stuff is 'being 
printed now and Henry Vaughan forgotten. We publish a 
timely piece. 

iWp soul, tfjere is a countrie 
afar beponb the stars, 

OTiJjere stanbs a biingeb Centri 
ail skillful in tfjc toars. 

®bere, abobe noise anb banger, 
ii>toeet peace sits, croton’b toitfj smiles, 
anb ©ne born in a manger 
Commanbs tfje beauteous files. 

$)e is tfjp gracious frtenb 
anb (©b mp soul atoafee!) 

Sib in pure lobe bescenb 
®o bie here for tbp sake. 

3f tbou canst get but tfjitfjer, 

®bere grotoes tfje flotore of peace, 

®be rose that cannot tnitfjer, 

®bP fortresse, anb tbp ease. 

I.eabe then tbp foolish ranges; 
jfor none can tbee secure, 

3But c0ne, tobo neber changes, 

2TbP <@ob, tbp life, tbp Cure. 



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23 


Poems to Those Who Died at Sea 

Many poets have written verses lamenting the death of 
some beloved one drowned at sea. The Latin poet Pro¬ 
pertius wrote one of the first, and he sang his best in an 
Elegy on his friend Paetus who was drowned, “and had 
for a tomb the whole Carpathian sea.” 

The “billows have no gods” (Non unda habet deos), sang 
Propertius, “for 

All the ropes which held thee to the rocks 
Gave way before the storms of night. 

O, ye murdered daughters of father Nerius 
And thou, Thetis, who hast also known 
A mother’s grief, 

Ye should have placed your arms beneath his tired chin; 
He could not have weighed down your hands.” 

John Milton wrote a more inspired song in his Elegy on 
the death of his friend who was drowned in the Irish Chan¬ 
nel. He tells us first how he and his friend grew up to¬ 
gether: 

For we were nursed upon the self-same hill, 

Fed the same flock by fountain, shade, and rill. 

Together both, ere the high lawns appear’d 
Under the opening eyelids of the mom, 

We drove afield, and both together heard 
What time the gray fly winds her sultry horn, 

Battening our flocks with the fresh dews of night. 

The pagan poet could only lament his loss, but Milton 
offers consolations: 

Weep no more, woeful shepherds, weep no more, 

For Lycidas, your sorrow, is not dead, 

Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor; 

So sinks the day-star in the ocean-bed, 

And yet anon repairs his dropping head 

And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore 

Flames in the forehead of the morning sky: 



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So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high 

Through the dear might of Him that walk’d the waves; 

Where, other groves and other streams along, 

With nectar pure his oozy locks he laves, 

And hears the unexpressive nuptial song 
In the blest kingdoms meek of joy and love. 

There entertain him all the saints above 
In solemn troops, and sweet societies, 

That sing, and singing, in their glory move, 

And wipe the tears forever from his eyes. 

Now, Lycidas, the shepherds weep no more; 

Henceforth thou art the Genius of the shore 
In thy large recompense, and shalt be good 
To all that wander in that perilous flood. 


Mediaeval Students' Songs 

Many students’ songs (Carmina Clerica) were written in 
the later middle ages. They sing the praise of wine, of 
love, of learning and of alma mater. The potatory element 
rather dominates, but it is often restrained. 

AVE, VINUM 
Vinum bonum et suave 
Bonis bonum, pravis prave 
Cunctis dulcis sapor , ave ! 

Mundana laetitia. 

“Here’s to good and pleasant wine, 

Good for the good; bad for the bad.” 

Ave, sospes in modestis 
In gulosis mala pestis 
Post amissionem vestis 
Sequitur patibulum. 

“Safe and healthful to the moderate, 

An evil pestilence to soakers.” 



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25 


Infinitus et Immensus 

The middle ages contributed to poetry certain rhymed 
Latin hymns. They were meant to be sung or chanted; and 
they were most effective because of their simplicity, sonor¬ 
ity and religious appeal. Adam de St. Victor, a lyrical poet 
of the twelfth century, wrote such verse. 

He portrays The Greatness of God and the plan of re¬ 
demption in a stanza: 

Infinitus et Immensus, 

Quern non capit ullus sensus 
Nec locorum spatia. 

Ex eterno temporales. 

Ex immenso fit localis, 

Ut restauret omnia. 

Infinity, Immensity 
No sense can apprehend Him 

Nor the boundlessness of His dwelling. 

Yet out of eternity he created time 
Out of Immensity, a place, 

That He might save the world. 

A Description of God 

Super cuncta, subter cuncta, 

Extra cuncta, inira cuncta. 

Infra cuncta, nec inclusus; 

Extra cuncta, nec exclusus; 

Super cuncta, nec elatus; 

Subter cuncta, nec substratus: 

Super totus, praesidendo; 

Subter totus, sustiendo; 

Extra totus, complectendo; 

Intra totus est implendo. 

According to Hildebert, Bishop of Le Mans, these lines 
describe God, and Hildebert, says Mr. Henry Adams, was 
the first poet of his time (1055-1133). 



26 


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“God is over all things, under all things; 
Outside all, inside all; 

Within but not enclosed; 

Without but not excluded; 

Above but not raised up; 

Below but not depressed; 

Wholly above, presiding; 

Wholly beneath, sustaining; 

Wholly without, embracing; 

Wholly within, filling.” 


A Greek Epigram 

The Greek Anthology has some beautiful things, though 
most of it is made up of rather uninterestng epitaphs and 
epigrams. A writer in the Nineteenth Century has called 
attention to the fact that some of the verses are like early 
English lyrics. He gives ihe following poem by Philodemus: 

I loved—and you. I played—Who hath not been 
Steeped in such play? If I was mad, I ween 
’Twas for a God and no earthly queen. 

Hence with it all. Then dark my youthful head, 

Where now scant locks of whitening hair instead, 
Reminders of grave old age, are shed. 

I gathered roses while the roses blew. 

Playtime is past, my play is ended, too. 

Awake, my heart! and worthier aims pursue. 


Art 

Art only, when all’s dust 
Through endless years shall dwell; 
The bust 

Outlasts the citadel. 


Theophile Gautier 



FRAGMENTS FROM PARNASSUS 


27 


A Lovely Snake 

In the Ninth Book of Milton’s Paradise Lost, the poet 
describes the approach of the serpent to Eve. The descrip¬ 
tion is unmatched' in the annals of natural history, for the 
snake is made a fascinating and an appealing object to Eve, 
who stands watching: 

“Fair, divinely fair, fit love for Gods.” 

The late Colonel Roosevelt would perhaps have called 
Milton a nature fakir, but he would have forgiven him for 
the beauty of the lines: 

“So spake the enemy of mankind, inclos’d 
In serpent, innate bad, and toward Eve 
Address’d his way, not with indented wave, 

Prone on the ground, as since, but on his rear, 
Circular base of rising folds, that tower’d 
Fold above fold, a surging maze, his head 
Crested oloft, and carbuncle his eyes; 

With burnish’d neck of verdant gold, erect 
Amid his circling spires, that on the grass 
Floated redundant: pleasing was his shape 
and lovely;.” 


The Face of Helen 

There are times in which Christopher Marlowe wrote not¬ 
able verse. 

Mephistopheles conjures up the shape of Helen of Greece, 
in order to gratify the sensual gaze of Faustus: 

“Was this the face that launched a thousand ships 
And burn’d the topless towers of Ilium? 

Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss! 

Her lips suck forth my soul—see where it flies. 

Come Helen, come give me my soul again; 

Here will I dwell, for heaven is in these lips. 




28 


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And all is dross that is not Helena. 

0 thou art fairer than the evening air, 
Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars. 
Brighter art thou than flaming Jupiter 
When he appear’d to hapless Semele; 

More lovely than the monarchs of the sky 
In wanton Arethusa’s azure arms; 

And none but thou shall be my paramour.” 


Bedouin Love Song 

Bayard Taylor wrote mostly very ordinary verse, but when 
it came to songs of love he was a poet and more than 
oriental. The newly-wed should read his Possession and abide 
by it and all lovers sing the refrain of the Bedouin Love 
Song: 


From the desert I come to thee 
On a stallion shod with fire; 

And the winds are left behind 
In the speed of my desire. 

Under thy window I stand, 

And the midnight hears my cry; 

I love thee, I love but thee, 

With a love that shall not die 
Till the sun grows cold, 

And the stars are old, 

And the leaves of the Judgment 
Book unfold! 

Look from my window and see 
My passion and my pain; 

I lie on the sands below, 

And I faint in your disdain. 

Let the night winds touch thy brow 
With the heat of my burning sigh, 

And melt thee to hear the vow 
Of a love that shall not die 



FRAGMENTS FROM PARNASSUS 


29 


Till the sun grows cold 
And the stars are old, 

And the leaves of the Judgment 
Book unfold! 

My steps are nightly driven, 

By the fever in my breast, 

To hear from thy lattice breathed 
The word that shall give me rest. 
Open the door of thy heart, 

And open thy chamber door, 

And my kisses shall teach thy lips 
The love that shall fade no more 
Till the sun grows cold, 

And the stars are old, 

And the leaves of the Judgment 
Book unfold! 


Immortality 

There was once a Dana who occasionally wrote real poetry; 
but he lived many years ago. 

Is this thy prison-house, thy grave, then, Love? 

And doth death cancel the great bond that holds 
Commingling spirits ? Are thoughts that know no bounds 
But, self-inspired, rise upward, searching out 
The Eternal Mind—the Father of all thought— 

Are they become mere tenants of a tomb?— 

Dwellers in darkness, who the illuminate realms 
Of uncreated 1 light have visited and lived? 

0, listen, man! 

A voice within us speaks that startling word, 

“Man, thou shalt never die!” Celestial voices 
Hymn it unto our souls: according harps, 

By angel fingers touched when the mild stars 




30 


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Of morning sang together, sound forth still 
The song of our great immortality: 

Thick clustering orbs, and this our fair domain, 
The tall, dark mountains, and the deep-toned seas, 
Join in this solemn, universal song. 

O, listen, ye, our spirits; drink it in 

From all the air! T’is in the gentle moonlight; 

Tis floating ’midst day’s setting glories; Night, 
Wrapped in her sable robe, with silent step 
Comes to our bed, and breathes it in our ears: 
Night, and the dawn, bright day, and thoughtful eve. 
All time, all bounds, the limitless expanse, 

As one vast mystic instrument, are touched 
By an unseen, living Hand, and conscious chords 
Quiver with joy in this great jubilee. 

The dying hear it; and as sounds of earth 
Grow dull and distant, wake their passing souls 
To mingle in this heavenly harmony. 

R. H. Dana, Sr. 


A Great Lyrist 

The centennial of Shelley’s death brought out many appre¬ 
ciations of his genius as well as revival of older critical 
opinions. We are reminded that Matthew Arnold once said, 
with modifying notes, that Shelley in poetry is a “beauti¬ 
ful angel with luminous wings.” Other and later critics 
have called him “the supreme lyrist of the world.” He 
wrote, we are told, the best chamber tragedy since 
Shakespeare (The Cenci), and the most beautiful of elegies 
(Adonais). He wrote perhaps the best of his lyrics in the 
last three years of his life and they are lyrics which will 
always enchant the world. 

Here is a familiar stanza from “Love’s Philosophy”, 

See the mountains kiss high heaven 
And the waves clasp one another; 



FRAGMENTS FROM PARNASSUS 


31 


No sister flower would be forgiven, 

If it disdained it’s brother; 

And the sunlight clasps the earth, 

And the moonbeams kiss the sea; 

What are all these kissings worth, 

If thou kiss not me? 

Under the head of “Poems of Disappointment and Es¬ 
trangement” William Cullen Bryant places Shelley’s poem, 
beginning— 

When the lamp is shattered, 

The light in the dust lies dead, 

When the cloud is scattered, 

The rainbow’s glory is shed; 

When the lute is broken, 

Sweet tones are remembered not; 

When the lips have spoken, 

Loved accents are soon forgot. 

A feeling, or aspiration, which “the heart lifts above” love 
is subtly suggested in the poem of two stanzas beginning 
“One word is too often profaned”. 

The last stanza is the better: 

I can not give what men call love; 

But wilt thou accept not 

The worship the heart lifts above 

And the Heavens reject not: 

The desire of the moth for the star, 

Of the night for the morrow, 

The devotion to something afar 
From the sphere of our sorrow? 

Everyone should know The Skylark by heart, or parts of 
it. Life is mellowed by reading it. 

The reaction to Shelley’s lyrics is one of the best tests of 
a capacity to appreciate the art of poetry, for they have 
music and form and imagination and feeling, compounded 
in such a way as to awaken the vibrations of any one who 
has the least aesthetic responsiveness. 



32 


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To the Ladies of the Court 


Ben Jonson made many translations from the classics, one of 
which was Horace’s " Ars Poetica”. The first edition of this, pub¬ 
lished in London in 1640, is very rare and has a special interest 
because appended to it are a number of pieces by Jonson never 
before published. These consist of the "Masque of the Gypsies”, 
an "Execration”, and several epigrams, odes and sonnets. 

Sir Edward Herbut, then ambassador to France, writes this in¬ 
troductory poem "to his friend Ben Jonson; and his Translation.” 

Was not enough, Ben Jonson to be thought 



J. Of English Poets best, but to have brought 
In greater state, to their acquaintance, one 

Made equall to himselfe and thee; that none 
Might be thy second : while thy glory is 

To be the Horace of our times, and his. 

Among the Odes is one, "To the Ladies of the Court”, which 
shows something of the dress and attitude of ladies of that day. 

C Ome Noble Nymphs, and doe not hide 
The joyes for which you so provide; 

If not to mingle with us men, 

What doe you here ? goe home agen: 

Your dressings doe confesse. 

By what we see, so curious arts, 

Of Pallas and Arachnes Arts, 

That you could meane no less. 

Why doe you weare the Silke-worms toyles ? 

Or glory in the shell-fish spoyles ? 

Or strive to shew the grains of Ore, 

That you have gathered long before, 

Whereof to make a stocke 
To graft the green Emerald on, 

Or any better water’d stone, 

Or Ruby of the Rock ? 



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33 


Hadrian’s Address to His Soul 

In his last days the Emperor Hadrian is said to have 
suffered from an incurable malady iand to have been tor¬ 
tured with pain. Just before his death he penned to his 
departing soul the following “playful! address” which has 
become famous and which would be more so if it could 
be well translated. However, the vocatives of the first 
and fourth lines do not need translation: 

Animula, vagula, blandula, 

Hospes eomesque corporis, 

Quae nunc abibis in loca — 

Pallidula, rigida, nudula — 

Nec, ut soles, dabis iocos? 

Mr. T. S. Jerome in his charming work, Roman 
Memories, says: 

“It seems to be the penalty imposed on all who write 
of Hadrian to offer a rendition in some modem tongue of 
these elusive verses; but no translation of them can pre¬ 
serve thesir ‘tender, delicate grace, half playful, half de¬ 
spairing as it is.’ A collection published by David John¬ 
ston in 1876 contains one hundred and sixteen of these 
attempts. The one hundred and seventeenth reads as 
follows:” 

Genial, little, vagrant sprite, 

Long my body’s friend and guest, 

To what place is now thy flight? 

Pallid, stark and naked quite, 

Stripped henceforth of joke and jest. 


Two Chinese Poems 

The Chinese were great in poetry as well as in the 
other arts. 

The most popular and widely known of Chinese poets 
was Li-po or Tai-po, A. D. 705-762, popularly known as 



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the Banished Angel (the name sometimes given to alcohol 
in the United States since prohibition). But Tai-po was 
dallied an angel because bis poetry was so heavenly. It 
was written under the influence of wine—according to 
an improbable and unprofitable tale. He met bis death by 
drowning, having leaned too far out of a boat to embrace 
the image of the moon. Miss Amy Lowell co-operating 
with a translator, Mrs. Aysoough, gives us this version of 
his poem called 


Drinking Alone in the Moonlight 
If Heaven did not love the wine, 

There would be no Wine Star in Heaven. 

If Earth did not love wine, 

There would be no Wine Springs on Earth. 

Why then be ashamed before Heaven to love wine? 

I have heard that clear thick wine is like the Sages: 
Again it is said that thick wine is like the Virtuous 
Worthies. 

Wherefore it appears that we have swallowed both 
Sages and Worthies. 

Why should we strive to be Gods and Immortals? 
Three cups, and one can perfectly understand the 
Great Tao; 

A gallon, and one is in accord with all nature. 

Only those in the midst of it can fully understand the 
joys of wine; 

I do not proclaim them to the sober. 


But Tai was also serious, if one may judge from his 
poem entitled “Profound Virtue.” This is a little mysti¬ 
cal and perhaps needs its context. I cannot give the name 
of the translator. 

They who know speak not, 

And they who speak know not; 




FRAGMENTS FROM PARNASSUS 


35 


To close the mouth and shut the gates, 
To blunt the point which lacerates, 

To simplify what complicates; 

To temper brightness in its glare, 
The shadows of the dust to share, 
The Deep’s identity declare. 

A man like that cannot be got 
And loved, and then discarded be; 
Cannot be got by profit’s bribe, 

Cannot be got for injury, 

Cannot be got by honor’s gift, 

Nor got for cheap humility, 

And so becomes, throughout the world, 
The type of high humanity. 


The Four Greatest Sonnets 

Mr. Watts-Dunton, who is the last word on Sonnets, 
says that the sonnet is so artistic in form without being 
coldly artificial, that it enables the poet to express his 
emotion effectively yet quietly “as if ihe were whispering 
behind a mask.” 

The Sonnet has been used as a poetic form by nearly 
a!ll great poets from Petrarch to the Victorians. 

The Shakespearean sonnet is made up of three qua¬ 
trains and a couplet, an arrangement which makes for 
what Watts-Dunton calls pensive sweetness; while the 
Petrarchian sonnet of an octave and sextet makes more 
for sonority. One would say that the Shakespearean form 
tells the story better, the Petrarchian form is more 
musical. 

The following are the four greatest English sonnets 
of pure emotion, according to Mr. T. W. Crosilamd in his 
book, “The English Sonnet”. Literary critics will perhaps 
disagree with this estimate; but the sonnets are good and 
literary critics are sometimes not. 



36 


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Renouncement 

I must not think of thee; and tired yet strong, 

I shun the love that lurks in all delight— 

The love of thee—and in the blue Heaven's height, 
And in the dearest passage of a song. 

Oh, just beyond the fairest thoughts that throng 
This breast, the thought of thee waits hidden yet 
bright; 

But must it never, never come in sight; 

I must stop short of thee the whole day long. 

But when sleep comes to close each difficult day, 
When night gives pause to the long watch I keep, 
And all my bonds I needs must loose apart, 

Must doff my will as raiment laid away— 

With the first dream that comes with the first sleep 
I run, I run, I am gathered to thy heart. 

Alice Meynell 


Love’s Farewell 

Since there’s no help, come let us kiss and part— 
Nay I (have 'done. You get no more of me! 

And I am glad, yea glad with all my heart, 

That thus so cleanly I myself can free; 

Shake hands for ever! Cancel all our vows! 

And when we meet at any time again, 

Be it not seen in either of our brows 
That we one jot of former love retain. 

Now at the last gasp of Love’s latest breath, 

When, his pulse failing, Passion speechless lies, 

When Faith is kneeling by his bed of death, 

And Innocence is closing up his eyes, 

—Now if thou would’st, when all have given 
him over, 

From death to life thou might’st him yet recover! 

Michael Drayton 



FRAGMENTS FROM PARNASSUS 


37 


Upon Westminster Bridge 

Earth has not anything to show more fair: 

Dull would he be of soul who could pass by 
A sight so touching in its majesty: 

This city now doth like a garment wear 
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare, 

Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie 
Open unto the fields, and to the sky: 

All bright and glittering in the smokeless air. 
Never did sun more beautifully steep 
In his first splendour valley, rock, or hill; 

Ne’er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep! 

The river glideth at his own sweet will: 

Dear God! the very houses seem asleep; 

And all that mighty heart is lying still! 

Wordsworth 


By the Sea 

It is a beauteous Evening, calm and free; 

The holy time is quiet as a Nun 
Breathless with adoration; the broad sun 
Is sinking down in tranquillity; 

The gentleness of heaven is on the sea: 

Listen! the mighty Being is awake, 

And doth with his eternal motion make 
A sound like thunder—everlastingly. 

Dear Child! dear Girl! that walkest with me here, 

If thou appear untouched by solemn thought, 

Thy nature is not therefore less divine: 

Thou liest in Abraham’s bosom all the year; 

And worship’st at the Temple’s inner shrine, 

God being with thee when we know it not, 

Wordsworth 



38 


FRAGMENTS FROM PARNASSUS 


Another authority selects the following as the 
four greatest sonnets. 


On His Blindness 

When I consider how my light is spent, 

Ere half my days, lin this dark world and wide, 

And that one talent which is death to hide 
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent 
To serve therewith my Maker, and present 
My true account, lest he returning chide, 

‘Doth God exact day labour, light denied ? ’ 

I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent 
That murmur, soon replies: ‘God doth not need 
Either man’s work or his own gifts. Who best 
Bears his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state 
Is kingly. Thousands, at hiis bidding, speed 
And post o’er land and ocean without rest: 

They also serve who only stand and wait.’ 

Milton 


That time of year thou may’st in me behold 
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang 
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, 
Bare ruin’d choirs where late the sweet birds sang. 

In me thou see’st the twilight of such day, 

As after sunset fadeth in the west; 

Which by-and-by black night doth take away, 

Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest. 

In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire, 

That on the ashes of his youth doth lie, 

As the death-bed whereon it must expire, 

Consum’d with that which it was nourish’d by. 

This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong, 
To love that well which thou must leave ere long. 

Shakespeare 



FRAGMENTS FROM PARNASSUS 


39 


The world is too much with us; late and soon, 
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers: 

Little we see in Nature that is ours; 

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! 

Tihiis Sea that bares ;her bosom to the moon; 

The winds that will be howling at all hours, 

And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers; 

For this, for everything, we are out of tune; 

It moves us not.—Great God! I’d rather be 
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; 

So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, 

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; 

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; 

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn. 

Wordsworth 


On First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer 

Much have I travelled in the realms of gold, 

And many goodly states and kingdoms seen; 
Round many western islands have I been 
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. 

Oft of one wide expanse had I been told 

That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne: 
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene 
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold: 
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies 
When a new planet swims into his ken; 

Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes 
He stared at the Pacific—and all his men 
Looked at each other with a wild surmise— 

Silent, upon a peak in Darien. 


Keats 



40 


FRAGMENTS FROM PARNASSUS 


Literary People 

There was never a time when literary people were 
taken as seriously as now. It was not always so. 

Dr. Guy Patin, a famous professor of medicine in the 
seventeenth century, once wrote: 

“People of letters are usually a good sort, without 
ambition fortunately for themselves, for they could never 
find means of gratifying it. They are fitted onlly to write 
books and breed children. As the incomparable Grotius 
siaid in a letter about Vossius, father of many children, 
that he doubted: 

Scribetne accuratiu an gigneret felicius. 

“Whether be wrote more accurately or propagated 
more felicitously.” 


"O! for a Booke” 

The following lines are supposed to have come from 
an “old book”, but they were in fact written by a London 
bookseller to activate his wares. Such is the statement 
of Mr. Austin Dobson in his Bookman’s Budget. 

0 for a Booke and a shadie nooke, 
eyther in-a-doore or out; 

With the grene leaves whisp’ring overhede, 
or the Streete cryes all about, 

Where I may Reade all at my ease, 
both of the Newe and Olde; 

For a jollie goode Booke whereon to looke, 
is better to me than Golde. 


A Phantasy 

On moonless evenings when the wind is still 
I light my gardens with three mimic moons, 
The festive paper lanterns of Japan. 

One from a low-hung limb of apple tree, 




FRAGMENTS FROM PARNASSUS 


41 


Another from a maple by the wall, 

And one suspended from the well-curb’s yoke. 

There they bloom softly in the velvet dark, 

Making a little world of golden light 
Until the short-lived candles sputter flare 
And one by one my moons are blotted out; 

And on the mind of my <glad phantasy 
I see the shining of the great far stars. 

The Immortal Lines in Festus 

Many years ago Mr. Philip James Baiiley, Barrister-at- 
Larw, wrote a long didactic poem called Festus. It will 
still be found in the libraries of our grandparents. A re¬ 
viewer of this work says: 

“Probably of all the thousands of Hines of “Festus” 
the only ones familiar to the present generation are found 
in this passage, which has embedded itself in the thought 
of the contemporary world as an expression of its aspira¬ 
tion:” 

We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths; 
In feelings, not in figures on a dial. 

We should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives 
Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best; 

And he whose heart beats quickest lives the longest;— 
Lives in one hour more than in years do some 
Whose fat blood sleeps as it slips along their veins. 

A Motto and a Prayer 

A certain person chooses as a motto—to guide one’s 
life—the following, which is both a motto and a prayer: 
“Show me the way and give me strength to keep in it.” 

I was asked to turn it into Latin—a famous language 
for mottoes and inscriptions. I asked my friend Dr. 
Arpad G. Gerster, who grew up with the tongue, to make 
the translation and it is this: 

Monstra iter, praebe vives te duce ut sequar. 



42 


FRAGMENTS FROM PARNASSUS 


Coincident Inspirations of Philemon and 
Walt Whitman 

Mr. John W. Chadwick calls attention to a poem by 
the Greek poet Philemon who died B. C. 262. The senti¬ 
ment of the Greek was revived and expressed again by 
Wait Whitman. Philemon writes this: 

‘‘Happy the animals! They do not bother 
Their heads about this question and another; 

None make inquiries, none need take the trouble 
To prove that black is white, or single double. 

No self-inflicted woes, no cares have they; 

All their own nature, their own laws obey. 

We mortals live a life not worth the living, 

To laws and politics attention giving, 

For some providing, pedigrees unwinding, 

Yet some excuse for worry always finding.” 

The Whitman passage is as follows: 

“I think I could turn and 1 live with animals; they are 
so placid and self-(contained; 

I stand and look at them long and long, 

They do not sweat and whine about their condition, 
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their 
sins, 

They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God, 
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the 
mania of owning things, 

Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived 
thousands of years ago, 

No one is respectable or unhappy over the whole 
earth.” 

Here is no deadly parallel, says Mr. Chadwick, but 
one sufficiently striking, considering the distance from 
Camden to Athens, the twenty-two (hundred intervening 
years, and the improbability that Whitman ever saw the 
Greek passage or heard of Philemon. 



FRAGMENTS FROM PARNASSUS 


43 


One of the Twelve Perfect Poems 

A critic writing of Swinburne’s poems, says: 

“The charm, perfect mechanism, and lyric sweetness 
of his verse may be seen .to the full in the exquisite poem, 
‘A Match,’ which has been called one of the dozen perfect 
poems in the language. Four stanzas are given below: 

If love were what the rose is, 

And I were like the leaf, 

Our lives would grow together 
In sad or singing weather, 

Blown fields or flowerful closes, 

Green pleasure or grey grief; 

If love were what the rose is, 

And I were like the leaf. 

If I were what the words are, 

And love were like the tune, 

With double sound and single 
Delight our lips would mingle, 

With kisses glad as birds are 
That get sweet rain at noon; 

If I were what the words are, 

And love were like the tune. 

If you were life, my darling, 

And I your love were death, 

We’d shine and snow together 
Ere March made sweet the weather 
With daffodil and starling 

And hours of fruitful breath; 

If you were life, my darling, 

And I your love were death. 

If you were thrall to sorrow, 

And I were page to joy, 

We’d play for lives and seasons 
With loving looks and treasons 



44 


FRAGMENTS FROM PARNASSUS 


And tears of night and morrow 
And laughs of maid and boy; 

If you were thrall to sorrow, 

And I were page to joy. 

The Wordsworthian Theory of Poetry 

The style and art of Wordsworth still have some ad¬ 
mirers despite the anti-Victorians. 

A reviewer takes from “Actaeon’s Defense and 
Other Poems” by Alice Wilson, the following concluding 
stanzas, which express, he thinks, rather neatly the 
Wordsworthian theory of poetry: 

Too great is love while loving 
For heart to realize, 

Too dear is song while singing 
To treasure e’er it dies. 

But lying in seclusion, 

When life is overpast, 

The heart its joys remembering 
Creates the song at last. 

Kubla Khan 

Verses from an Opium Dream; perhaps of Samuel Taylor 
Coleridge 

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan 
A stately pleasure-dome decree: 

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran 
Through caverns measureless to man 
Down to a sunless sea. 

So twice five miles of fertile ground 
With walls and towers were girdled round: 

And here were gardens bright with sinuous rills 
Where blossom’d many an incense J bearing tree; 

And here were forests ancient as the hills, 

Enfolding sunny spots of greenery. 



FRAGMENTS FROM PARNASSUS 


45 


The shadow of the dome of pleasure 
Floated midway on the waves; 

Where was heard the mingled measure 
From the fountain and the oaves. 

It was a miracle of rare device, 

A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice! 

A damsel with a dulcimer 
In a vision once I saw: 

It was an Abyssinian maid, 

And on her dulcimer she play’d, 

Singing of Mount Abora. 

Could I revive within me, 

Her symphony and song, 

To such a deep delight ’twould win me, 

That with music loud and long, 

I would build that dome in air, 

That sunny dome! those caves of ice! 

And all who heard should see them there, 

And all should cry, Beware! Beware! 

His flashing eyes, his floating hair! 

Weave a circle round him thrice, 

And close your eyes with holy dread, 

For he on honey-dew hath fed, 

And drunk the milk of Paradise. 

But some say this was written before Coleridge began to take opium. 


A Poet’s Self-Analysis 

This personality study was made by the poet Gray at 
the age of twenty-five. It may be commended to the 
youth of any generation. 

He speaks of himself as possessing: 

“A reasonable quantity of dullness, a great deal of 
silence, and something that rather resembles, than is, 
thinking; a confused notion of many strange and fine 
things that hiave swum before my eyes for some time, a 
want of love for general society.-a sensibility for 




46 


FRAGMENTS FROM PARNASSUS 


what others feel, and indulgence for their faults and 
weaknesses, a love of truth and a detestation of anything 


else 


The Salutation of the Dawn 

From the Sanskrit 

Listen to the exhortation of the Dawn! 

Look to this Day! For it is Life, 

The very Life of Life. 

In its brief course lie all the Varieties 
And Realities of your Existence; 

The Bliss of Growth, 

The Glory of Action, 

The Splendor of Beauty: 

For Yesterday is but a Dream, 

And Tomorrow is only a Vision; 

But today well lived 

Makes every Yesterday a Dream of Happiness, 
And every Tomorrow a Vision of Hope. 

Look well therefore to this Day! 

Such is the Salutation of the Dawn. 


The Roundel 

The Roundel is a heraldic device, and is also a poem written 
in a peculiar form. It is described by Swinburne as follows: 

A roundel is wrought as a ring or a star- 
bright sphere, 

With craft of delight and with cunning of 
sound unsought, 

That the heart of the hearer may smile 'if 
to pleasur e this ear 
A roundel is wrought. 




FRAGMENTS FROM PARNASSUS 


47 


Its jewel of music is carven of ail or of 
augiht—' 

Love, laughter or mourning—remembrance 
of rapture or fear— 

That fancy may fashion to hang in the ear 
of thought. 

As a bird’s quick song runs round, and the 
hearts in us hear 

Pause answer to pause, and again ibhe same 
strain caught, 

So moves the device whence, round as a 
pearl or tear, 

A roundel is wrought. 

An Old French Song 

MONSIEUR DENIS 

En mil sept cent deaux, mon coeur 
Vous declara son ardeur: 

J’etais un petit volcan: 
Souvenez-vous-en, souvenez-vous-en... 
Feu des premieres amours 
Que ne brulez-vous toujours? 
MADAME DENIS 

On nous maria, je crois 
A Saint^Germain-l’Auxerrois. 

J’etais mise en satin-blanc 
Sou ven e z -vous - en, isouvenez-jvous-en. 

De plaisir charmans a-tours, 

Je vous conserve toujours. 

Monsieur Denis, se mettrant sur son seant 
Comme j’etais etoffe 
Mme. Denis, s’assay ant de meme 
Comme vous etes coiffe! 

MONSIEUR DENIS 
Habit jaune en bouracan 

Souvenez-vous-en, souvenez-vous-en. 



48 


FRAGMENTS FROM PARNASSUS 


Another Phantasy 

And is this then delusion? can it be 
That like the rest high heaven is phantasy? 

Can God’s implicit promise be but one 
Among so many visions all undone? 

Nay, if on earth two souls thro’ sundering fate 
Can save their sisterhood inviolate, 

If dimness and deferment, time and pain, 

Have no more lasting power upon those twain 
Than stormy thunderclouds which, spent and done, 
Leave grateful earth still gazing on the sun,— 

If their divine hope gladly can forgo 
Such nearness as this wretched flesh can know, 
While, spite of all that even themselves can do, 
Each by her own truth feels the other true:— 
Faithful no less is God, who having won 
Our spirits to His endless unison 
Betrays not our independence, nor can break 
The oath unuttered which His silence spake. 

F. W. H. Myers 


The Greek Anthology 

The Greek Anthology is a body of poetry in the form 
of inscriptions, dedications, prayers and epigrams which 
appeared from 700 B. C. to 1000 A. D. It is therefore a 
form of poetry which remained alive, as Mackail says, for 
1700 years. 

About 4000 of these poems have been preserved in 
two collections, made in the tenth and fourteenth cen¬ 
turies, and there are many others, not in these collections. 

J. W. Mackail has made two anthologies with trans¬ 
lations, grouping the verses under the headings, Love, 
Prayers, Epitaphs, Literature and Art, Religion, Nature, 
The Family, Beauty, Fate, The Human Comedy, Earth, 
Life. 

A Doctor named Nicias, a friend of Theocritus, wrote 
the following inscription for 



FRAGMENTS FROM PARNASSUS 


49 


A WAYSIDE TOMB 

Sit beneath the poplars here, traveler, 

When thou art weary! 

And drawing nigh drink of our spring; 

Then when later far away 
Remember the fountain that Simus set 
By the side of Gillus 
His dead child. 

In this same anthology is the following by Meleager: 

ODI ET AMO 
(I Hate and 1 Love) 

Take this message', Dorcas; ilo again a second and 
third time, Dorcas, take her all my message; run; delay 
no longer; fly. Wait a little, Dorcas, prithee a little; Dor¬ 
cas, whither so fast before learning all I would say? And 
add to what I have just said—or rather—I am a fool; 
say nothing at all—only that—say everything; spare not 
to say everything. Yet why do I send you out, Dorcas, 
when myself, see, I go forth with you? 

This, also from the Anthology, is by Rufinus. 

The Greek Sculptors 

Ah! where is now Praxiteles? and where the hands of 
Heraclite 

That wrought of old such images, as made the marble 
breathe delight? 

Who now shall forge the ambrosial hair, the burning 
glance of Melite, 

Or teach the carven stone how fair the splendours of 
her bosom be? 

Brave sculptors! would that it were mine to bid you 
at a lover’s nod 

For such a beauty raise a shrine, as for the statue of 
a God! 



50 


FRAGMENTS FROM PARNASSUS 




A Misogynist’s Song 

Sir Walter Scott wrote the following: lines. They are 
untrue and unjust, but they fit an occasional mood as 
when a young man has been rejected by his best girl: 
The verses occur in his novel “The Betrothed.” 

Woman’s faith and woman’s trust— 

Write the characters in dust; 

Stamp them on the running stream, 

Paint them on the moon’s pale beam, 

And each evanescent letter 
Shall be clearer, firmer, better, 

And more permanent, I ween, 

Than the things those letters mean. 

I have strain’d the spider’s thread 
’Gainst the promise of a maid; 

I have weigh’d a grain of sand 
Gainst her plight of heart and hand; 

I hold my true love of the token, 

How her faith proved light and her word was broken; 
Again her word and truth she plight, 

And I believed them again ere night. 


There Is a Tavern in the Town 

This tavern was once melodiously celebrated by a stu¬ 
dent song of mediaeval times as follows: 

Meum est propositum in taberna mori; 

Vinum sit appositum morientis ori, 

Ut dicant, cum venerint angelarum chori, 

Deus sit propitias huic potatori. 

Take me to a tavern when my time has come for 
dying; 

Put a bottle to my lips when I stark am lying, 

So that when the angels for my spirit come a-fiying, 
“God comfort this old drunkard,” they will all be crying. 



FRAGMENTS FROM PARNASSUS 


51 


To Faunus 

AN ODE BY HORACE PUT IN FOUR LANGUAGES 
One of the most charming and musical of the 
Odes of Horace is that to Faunus. 

AD FAUNUM 

Faune, Nympharum fugientum amator, 
per meos fines et aprica rura 
lenis incedas, abeasque parvis 
aequus aluminas, 

si tener pleno cadit haedus anno, 
larga nec desunt Veneris sodali 
vina craterae, vetus ara multo 
fumat odore. 

Ludit herboso pecus omne campo, 
cum tibi Nonae redeunt Decembres; 
festus in pratis vacat otioso 
cum ibove pagus; 
inter audaces lupus errat agnos; 
spar git agrestes tibi silva frondes; 
gaudet invisam pepulisse fossor 
ter pede terram. 

Ode 18, Book III 

Thou lover of the flying Nymphs—oh fare 
Indulgent through these sunny fields of mine, 
Nor, Faunus, leave the younglings of my kine 
Without thy care; 

If every year a kid for thee I spare; 

And Venus’ friend—the cup—ne’er lack for wine 
And smouldering redolent, thine olden shrine 
Make sweet the air 

With the December Nones our praises flow; 

The herds all idly roam the grassy leas; 

The village, festive, loitering, is with these 
Afield also: 



52 


FRAGMENTS FROM PARNASSUS 


Amid unmindful lambs the wolf may go; 

For thee the leaves fall from the forest trees, 
Labourers the happy time for dancing seize 
On earth—their foe. 


A FAUNE 

Faune, amateur des nymphes fugitives, 

Dans mes enclos, mes champs ensoleilles 
Marche clement, et pars sans invectives 

Pour mes faons eveilles, 
Si, chaque an, meurt le chevreau de coutume, 

Si le cratere agreable a Cypris 
Abonde en vins, si l’antique autel fume 

De parfums bien nourris. 
Lorsque Decembre, aux nones, te refete, 

Tout le betail joue aux terrians herbeux, 

Et sur les pres le bourg joyeux s’arrete, 

Oisif comme les bceufs. 

Le loup se mele aux brebis intrepides; 

L’agreste bois t’effeuille ses rameaux; 

Gai, le colon frappe, a trois temps rapides, 

Ce sol hier plein de maux. 


A FAUNO 

Fauno, amator de le fuggenti Nimfe, 
ne’ miei confini e per gli aprici campi 
entra clemente e vanne mite a’ miei 

piccoli allievi, ' 

se ogni anno a te cade un novello capro, 
e abbonda il vino nel cratere amico 
di Venere, ed a te fuma di incensi 

l’ara vetusta. 



FRAGMENTS FROM PARNASSUS 


53 


Scherza il bestiame per gli erbosi campi 
quando ti tornan le decembri None; 
co’ riposanti buoi lieto ne’ prati 

ozia il paese; 

va errando il lupo fra gli agnelli audaci; 
sparge le agresti fronde a te la selva; 
urta in tre note il suolo inviso, e gode 
lo zappatore. 

AN FAUNUS 

Faunus, o Liebkoser um scheue Nymfen, 

Durch die Feldmark mir und die Sonnenacker, 

Wolle sanft hinwandeln, und hold den kleinen 

Zoeglingen aibgehen; 

Wenn am Jahrfest blutet ein zartes Boecklein, 

Und der Mischkrug dir, ein Genoss der Venus, 

Reiches Weins nicht darbt, und des Moosaltares 

Vieler Geruch damft! 

Alles Vieh frohlockt in dem gruenen Anger, 

Wenn gekehrt dir sind die Decembernonen; 

Mussig feirt durch Wiesen das Dorf, und mussig 

Weidet der Pflugstier. 

Ohne Furcht sehn Lsemmer den Wolf gesellet; 

Ehrend streut dir landliches Laub die Waldung; 

Frcehlich stamft Erdreich, das ihn qualt, der Graber, 

Hupfend im Dreischlag. 

The Land of Heart's Desire 

Miany think that W. B. Yeats is a poet. He wrote a 
little play called The Land of Heart’s Desire; it would be 
said in modern vernacular that it had “fairy stuff” in it. It 
is very charming and was presented once—about twenty 
odd years ago—at a theatre in New York. At the end 
of the play the little heroine, if she is a heroine, dies; 
and Father Hart, the good priest says: 



54 


FRAGMENTS FROM PARNASSUS 


‘Thus do the spirits of evil snatch their prey 
Almost out of the very hand of God; 

And day by day their power is more and more, 

And men and women leave old paths, for pride 
Comes knocking with thin knuckles on the heart.” 

Then a voice sings outside: 

“The wind blows out of the gates of the day, 

The wind blows over the lonely of heart. 

And the lonely of heart is withered away 
While the faeries dance in a place apart, 

Shaking their milk-white feet in a ring, 

Tossing their milk-white arms in the air; 

For they hear the wind laugh and murmur and sing 
Of a land where even the old are fair, 

And even the wise are merry of tongue.” 


William Blake’s Reaction to the Dawn 

William Blake, poet and artist, has lately come into 
much vogue, and with reason. In Gilchrist’s now almost 
priceless autobiography of Blake he gives, opposite the 
title page, a quotation from Blake’s “Vision of the Last 
Judgment” when “bad art and science would be over¬ 
whelmed” and “error or creation would be burned up.” 

“I assert, for myself, that I do not behold the out¬ 
ward creation, and that for me it is a hindrance and not 
action. ‘What’, it will be questioned, ‘when the sun rises 
do you not see a round disc of fire, somewhat like a 
guinea?’ Oh! no! no! I see an innumerable company of 
the heavenly host, crying: Holy, holy, holy is the Lord 
God Almighty. I question not my corporeal eye any more 
than I would question a window concerning a sight. I 
look through it and not with it.” 




FRAGMENTS FROM PARNASSUS 


55 


Two Valedictories 

An olid book called the Regimen of Health of the 
School of Salernum, having given all the rules for correct 
living, ends In valedictories. One is translated by Har¬ 
rington of the time of Queen Elizabeth, and one by Dr. 
John Ordonaux, of the Hate Victorian period. We close this 
collection With the two valedictories : 

And here I cease to write, 

But will not cease, 

To wish you live in health 
And die in peace. 

And Ye (our physicke rules) 

That friendly read: 

God grant that Psysicke 
You may never need. 

Haryngton, 1608 


VALEDICTORY 

The flower of Physic endeth here its strain; 

The Author, happy o’er his garnered grain, 

Prays that in Heaven there be prepared for him, 

A seat near Christ, and His blest Seraphim. 

Amen! 

Ordronaux 

EXPLICIT tractatus qui Flos Medicinae vocatur, 

Auctor erat gratus, per quern fuit abbreviatus; 
Sublimis status coelo sit ei preparatus; 

Christi per latus stet cum Sanctis elevatus. 

Amen! 












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